Quick flight today

I took half the day off today to go flying. I met with Joel to go over plans for a cross country flight to Jefferson County Airport (0S9), which would allow me to scout the first part of my intended long cross-country route to Friday Harbor. Skies dawned mostly clear this morning in Olympia, with only some high cirrus and usual low-level morning scud that would burn off by 9.

Michael had a music concert at school at 11, so my plan was to head to the airport right after that. Unfortunately, mother nature had other plans...the 11 am forecasts did not look good for places further north. After the concert I made the call to cancel the cross country and just practice maneuvers around KOLM, where the weather was still quite good.

However, those plans didn't work out either. Since the last time I flew 898, she had an oil change, and in the course of that maintenance task some of the cowling fasteners didn't quite make it back on securely. This is a fairly normal thing on Cessna 172s, but I was concerned about the extent of the gap between cowling and mount on one side. Despite a hunch that it was perfectly ok to fly, I decided to cancel the afternoon flight until I could consult with Joel.

I finally talked to Joel after 5, and we agreed the aircraft was safe to fly. In the meantime, the club's maintenance officer for 898 called me and also assured me it was safe, and also mentioned that he managed to reattach two of the missing fasteners. I was able to get a third opinion when I showed up at the hangar around 6:30 to find the club president working with another club aircraft in the hangar next door. So by the time I launched, I had no fewer than three expert opinions, all reinforcing what my gut told me this afternoon, but all the same giving me a higher comfort level that I could fly safely.

So I launched under mid-level stratus (6000') and the calmest winds I've ever experienced. There was not a bump to be had at any point tonight...lovely! I did my customary trip around the patch and headed south to practice maneuvers. I did a decent job at "turns around a point" and as I rolled out of the last one, I saw rain bands falling about 3 miles south, headed my way. Back to Olympia, where I encountered some light showers, two more pattern circuits, and back in the hangar.

I played around with GPS Visualizer by simply turning our Garmin handheld GPS on and leaving it in my flight bag. A couple of quick up/down loads at home, and I was able to produce this in Google Earth:



This will be yet another fun toy to play with, and is actually really helpful for grading myself on maneuvers. Here is a close-up of my "turns around a point"...



One of the turns with a "bulge" to the east was a "clearing turn", which we do to ensure no other traffic are nearby, and also to signal to any such traffic that we are maneuvering. And the other one was, simply put, a poorly performed turn. But I was pleased with the two tight ones! I was emphasizing keeping altitude and airspeed pegged throughout, and I accomplished both (1000' above ground, and 90 knots).

Video of tonight's flight forthcoming this weekend...I tried turning off autofocus, and also used a $3 mono/stereo adapter from Radio Shack to try to get the intercom patch in stereo. Hopefully that will improve the video quality.

Next aircraft time scheduled for Saturday evening...I may try again to go up to Jeff Co, or I had so much fun with maneuvers, I might just do more of that.